Cataclysm
by Chaotic Century
Summary: Phoenix. Dan. Willow. Three lives, three stories, all taking place over the course of one terrible day in ZAC 2056 when one of Zi's three moons broke apart and everything changed forever. A side project to the Earthling trilogy set three years before "Earthling"; Battle Story/Chaotic Century timeline.
1. Phoenix: Grit

**Author's Note:** Like my "Earthling" trilogy and its other side projects, "Cataclysm" is set in that imagined timeline (an amalgamation of the Battle Story and Chaotic Century) on the day of the meteor event in ZAC 2056, as seen from my three main characters' perspectives. You don't need to have read the trilogy to read "Cataclysm," but it's strongly recommended.  
This trio of stories took me four years from beginning to end to complete, and are meant to stand together instead of separately. I hope you enjoy them. Reviews, or even story seeds that you think might tickle my fancy, are all welcomed, appreciated, and responded to!

**DEDICATION  
**_For jdoug4118  
Words fail me to express my gratitude_

* * *

**PHOENIX**  
_**Grit**_

"Come out to the barn when you're done with lunch, alright? Heinrich may as well come, too. We'll need your help today to finish bundling the last of the wheat. The transporter should be here in a few hours to pick it up, so we need to hurry."

Phoenix paused, the serrated knife in his hand hovering in midair from where it had been about to cut another slice of bread. "I'd help you guys out," he said casually, "but I promised Cass I would take a look at one of their sheep this afternoon. Seems to be favoring its front leg."

Mama looked sternly at her eldest son, who was maintaining an impressively neutral expression, though there was a bit of a mischievous light in his bright green eyes, too. "Is that so?"

Phoenix nodded solemnly. "It's important to be a good neighbor," he said. He then cut into the loaf of bread with gusto, carving himself a thick slice and plopping it onto his plate.

Heinrich was watching this exchange from the foot of the table with interest. His eyes, very nearly as shockingly green as his older brother's, were wide. "Can I come see the sheep?" he asked.

"Excellent idea, darling," Mama said immediately, to Phoenix's chagrin. "Take your brother along then, Phoenix. Maybe you can teach him some of your 'talents' at animal medicine." Her wry look indicated that she was only slightly buying his excuse.

Phoenix sighed. "Alright then." As he spread a healthy amount of butter on his bread, his keen mind swiftly went to work, plotting how to ditch Heinrich without getting into trouble.

Papa came into the room just then, donning his wide-brimmed hat. Such precautions were always necessary; the midday sun in summertime could be merciless, even when blotted out with cloud cover as it was today, and every member of the Standhaft family save Mama had very fair skin. "Try to leave some of that bread for the rest of us, eh?"

"I'm a growing boy," Phoenix retorted, his mouth full.

"So am I!" Heinrich added.

"Yes, yes, but there are four people in this household, not two, and Mama and I work hard at baking every loaf."

"And your efforts are duly appreciated."

Mama smacked Phoenix with her dish towel, but the expression on her face said that she wasn't all that mad. "Both of you come out to the barn when you're finished helping Cass."

"Sure thing," Phoenix agreed easily, though he had no intention of doing anything of the kind. Papa waved, and he and Mama stepped out the door and into the yard.

"Eat up." Phoenix popped the last of the bread into his mouth. "I want to get going soon, too."

"Will you teach me how to help animals?" Heinrich asked eagerly, nibbling delicately - and agonizingly slowly - at his toast. "What's the sheep's name? What will you do for its leg?"

"So many questions out of such a tiny person!"

"I'm not tiny! I'm almost as tall as you!"

"Maybe in ten years. If you're lucky."

"Not true! Mama says I'm going to be even taller than you are."

"The only chance of that ever happening is if you eat your food, little man. You'll need all the good nutrition you can get if you're going to have a chance of turning out like me." This did the trick, and the six-year old dug in, polishing off not just his bread, but his cheese and apple slices, as well.

Phoenix dropped their dishes rather messily in the sink, figuring his parents would be working in the barn for so long that he could just wash them later, before they returned. "All set?"

"Sheep time, yay! Does she have a name? If she doesn't, can I name her? What do you think is a good name for a sheep? Woolly? Fluffy? Sheepy? Daisy? Bluebell?"

"Shush just a second. You're not coming to Cass' house with me."

"I'm not?" Heinrich was crestfallen.

"No. You're going to do something even better."

"I am? Like what? What am I going to do?"

"You'll see. Get your hat and come on."

"But what about your hat?" Heinrich asked, scrambling to fetch his own.

"Oh, I don't really like hats."

"Really? Why? Don't you hate sunburns, though? You get sunburns too!" Phoenix grabbed his little brother's hand and led him firmly out the door. Together they headed towards one of the wheat fields. "What are we doing here?" the boy persisted.

"Shh. Listen."

Heinrich stopped in his tracks, listening hard. "What?"

"Don't you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Phoenix put his hand up to his ear. "I think Klaus is calling you."

"He is?! I told him to stay put in our room today! Why is he out here?" Heinrich was clearly quite agitated to discover that his imaginary friend had disobeyed orders, but perhaps even more than this was curious as to why Klaus would have done such a thing.

In inspecting the condition of the farm's fences the prior week, Phoenix had decided a break was in order and gone exploring a bit in the forest beyond the property's edge. Not very far into the thick wood, he had discovered an enchanting little pool of water that he knew Heinrich would adore. It seemed magical even to him, which meant Heinrich, lover of all things fantastical, would be able to play happily there for hours. Phoenix had meant to bring him out to see it himself, but using it as an excuse to not bring him over to Cass' was the next best thing.

Still pretending to listen carefully to some far-off voice, Phoenix added, "It sounds like Klaus is trying to tell you that he found a little pond where fairies live."

"Fairies?!" Heinrich's face lit up. "Where? How do I get to it? What is Klaus saying now?"

Phoenix "listened" again. "He says if you go that way through the wheat to the fence, keep going into the woods, then turn left at the crooked pine tree, you'll find it."

"Yay!" Heinrich darted off in the indicated direction.

"Have fun!" Phoenix called. Heinrich raised a hand in acknowledgment and was soon lost in the tall wheat stalks, their heads nodding lightly in the breeze.

The farm was quiet now. Phoenix smiled to himself, appraising with satisfaction the motion of the cloud cover above; perhaps the sky was going to clear this afternoon, after all. Better yet, there were no witnesses to be found in the still farm around him to spot him departing sans pesky brother. He ran a hand through his attractively mussed russet hair, and set off down the dirt road to the Lindens'.

-.-.-.-

Cass was waiting for him.

"Hey, Phoenix," she said, all soft limbs and shy smiles.

"Hey, you," he replied affectionately.

The Lindens' sheep were fine. Phoenix was not here to help the sheep.

He studied her familiar, heart-shaped face: the pale gray eyes, the glossy black hair. She hadn't changed much since childhood, except to become even prettier. She and Phoenix had been friends since they were toddlers.

Just friends.

Today, he was hoping that would change.

Phoenix had never lacked for girls who were interested in him; the puppy love crushes had begun in year three or so, and continued on in number and seriousness as time had gone by. He had always been tall for his age, something the females around him seemed to appreciate, and both his flaming red hair and ethereally green eyes were unusual traits not often found in the Zoidian population at large. His family's facial marking, too, was unique: most others had linear marks on their chins or a cheek or below an eye, but his, a red semicircle with rays extending out of it like a rising sun, was positioned just above his right eyebrow. No small number of girls in Schönberg had gotten into their parents' face paints at one time or another and dreamily drawn a similar marking above their own eyebrows, just to see how it would look.

It wasn't that Phoenix had never been interested in any of them. He'd exhibited mild curiosity in others from time to time, and had been caught behind a barn or in a secluded corner of a field more than once with whomever had temporarily caught his fancy. But these dalliances did not last. Always, in the end, he found himself drawn once more to Cass. The two were dear friends, yes, but so much of her was still shrouded in mystery, and he longed to peel back those layers of who she was. It wasn't just hormones driving him, then, but a fascination with that which he had not yet had the opportunity to discover.

Over the last few months, he had been consciously cultivating his friendship with Cass, subtly preparing it for, he hoped, a step forward. More young women had been disappointed as Phoenix had single-mindedly devoted himself to this task, and today he was going to find out once and for all if Cass shared his feelings.

She had been expecting him; they had arranged to see one another today specifically because her parents and older brother were out of town. Phoenix had not dwelled on this point too much so as not to arouse her suspicions, but perhaps she was more on the same page than he'd thought. She seemed unusually awkward today, in fact, and he took this as a promising sign.

"Want to see our new lamb?" Cass asked him, interrupting his ruminations. "Bluebell is usually very protective, but you're around so much I bet she'll feel comfortable with you."

So he had come here for ovine matters, after all. He made a mental note to tell Heinrich later that the Lindens did, in fact, have a sheep named Bluebell.

"Sure."

He followed Cass to a small grassy area near the barn with several animal pens. Inside one with a three-sided shelter in its corner were Bluebell and her newborn.

"Aren't you a lovely wee thing?" Phoenix cooed at the shaky, knobby-kneed youngster. It looked over at him and gave a tiny, happy bleat. Bluebell nudged it with her nose.

"He likes you!" Cass was beaming.

"Your lamb's got good taste."

"Yes, yes he does," she agreed with a playful smile.

"He obviously knows a quality man when he sees one," Phoenix continued imperiously. "In fact, he may even be wondering how his mistress could possibly do any better."

"Phoenix!" she laughed.

"Cass." Something in his tone made her turn to him. He was regarding her seriously now, and her gray eyes widened slightly, perhaps in recognition of the shift that had just occurred. He paused a beat. "Do you think you might...would you ever..."

He stopped talking then, because she was slowly raising her chin to him and closing her eyes, and he understood this for the obvious cue that it was. He lowered his head to kiss her softly on her beautiful lips.

It was perfect. Everything was perfect. She was kissing him back, she was placing her hands on his shoulders, she was standing on her tiptoes, she seemed to be enjoying this as much as he was.

He broke off after a moment, to give them both time to breathe.

"Cass." There was so much happiness in that one word. He was grinning so widely his cheeks hurt.

She was smiling back at him, her face bright and joyous and perhaps a little bit lusty, too.

He leaned forward to kiss her again, but before he got there, her face had suddenly contorted into abject terror. Her mouth gaped open in a silent scream.

He jerked backwards, deeply startled by this turn of events. Had he done something wrong?

And now she was screaming, her eyes focused somewhere above and far past him. She raised a trembling finger to point. Phoenix swung around. His breath died in his throat.

The clouds had cleared enough to reveal not just the sun but, opposite it, the moons, pale little droplets lingering stubbornly in the gray sky well past their bedtimes.

The moons.

There were only two.

Streaming out from where the third, De, ordinarily would have been was an impossibly massive, deadly blossom of debris, its vast arms stretching nearly all the way across the sky. Even as Phoenix and Cass stood there, staring and dumbstruck, the lunar remnants were catching fire in Zi's upper atmosphere and hurtling towards the ground. Towards them.

One meteorite slammed into a nearby tree, knocking it clear over and setting it on fire; another landed about thirty feet away, kicking up a huge plume of dirt and clods of grass.

More were coming. More meteorites than there were stars in an endless night.

There was no time left.

"Run!" Phoenix yelled, grabbing Cass' arm. There were no other hiding places within short sprinting distance but Bluebell's shelter, and so together they ran towards it, vaulting the pen's fence and then diving under the flimsy structure. They crouched there breathlessly, as Bluebell pranced and snorted with terror, herding her lamb into the furthest corner as though this, this action of all things, would protect her youngster from the horror plunging from the ashen sky.

Countless shuddering impacts shook the ground beneath their trembling limbs. Phoenix kept his face close to Bluebell and her lamb, breathing in their warm, clean animal smell as the air around them all darkened and became choked with flying dirt and dust. He pulled Cass closer to him - purposelessly, for he could not shield her any more than Bluebell could her baby - and struggled to think of a plan. Where would they be safe from the meteorites? What structure or geographical feature could possibly provide sanctuary from the violent hell raining down upon Zi? His brain sputtered along, nearly short-circuiting on the flood of adrenaline and the surrounding roar of collisions, collapsing edifices, snapping trunks, hungry flames. A cave? That was all he could think of: a cave, and even though he knew full well there weren't any caves for miles around, this was the very best his shock-addled mind could muster. For no water could safeguard them, no cliff, no forest -

His breath ceased completely.

Heinrich.

Heinrich was all alone in the woods outside of their family's farm.

Infinitely worse than the knowledge that Phoenix's own fiery death could come at any moment, with absolutely no warning, was the icy knot of fear for his brother's safety.

He didn't know what he could do to help, to keep Heinrich safe - no caves - but Phoenix knew that he couldn't stay here. He had to try to find Heinrich, try to keep him alive even though Zi itself seemed to be breaking apart and it was unlikely Phoenix would even be able to make it home.

Cass had been screaming almost non-stop since they'd gotten under the shelter, her eyes squeezed shut, but now she was simply sobbing from sheer terror, clinging to Bluebell for some dim vestige of comfort. Phoenix squeezed her shoulder and she jumped, startling the sheep, who bleated fearfully and would have bolted had Cass not had her arms wrapped around the frightened creature's leg.

"I need to go!" Phoenix shouted, but he was drowned out by a particularly apocalyptic-sounding thundering in the distance.

"What?" she cried back, swiping tears from her eyes. Her face was already covered in dirt, and her nose was running profusely.

"I have to find my brother!"

"You can't go out there! You're crazy! You'll die!"

He shook his head, gesturing to the world out beyond the low roof of Bluebell's shelter. It was getting harder and harder to see anything at all, so thick and choking was the flying dust. "We're going to die here, too, if a meteorite hits. You think this little roof is going to keep us safe?"

A meteorite the size of an apple smashed into the ground some hundred feet away just then as if to emphasize his point, its diminutive size belying the enormous wave of dirt and grass it sent flying through the air. The lamb let out a squeal of terror as he dashed away over a now-broken section of fence and into the brown fog. Bluebell bleated immediately, fruitlessly summoning him, and finally broke free of Cass' grasp to run off, too. Her distressed calls, further and further away, could be heard in the short moments when the thundering crash of meteorites ceased.

Phoenix gave Cass one quick, tight hug - a wordless farewell, for he didn't know if either would ever see the other again - scanned the sky beyond the shelter in hopes of finding a clear path back to the road home, and darted out.

He found his way to the opposite side of the pen, using its far corner to orient himself towards the front of the property and the road beyond. His eyes roamed endlessly: up, down, sideways, seeking dangers in all directions, but he simply couldn't spot every potential threat in time.

The next meteorite couldn't have been any larger than a corn kernel, but its sheer velocity gave it tremendous power. Phoenix only just raised his arms in time to shield his face as the fence beams he had been about to vault over were obliterated by the tiny projectile, exploding into a shower of splintered wood. Hot shards bit into his flesh but there was no time to stop; scarcely had the battering of his forearms ceased when he was already looking upwards again, seeking the next hazard: what it would hit and where it would land.

In chaotic fashion, he eventually made his way to the road. It was nearly impossible to see ahead of him beyond a few feet, and there was much to stumble over: holes, rocks, fallen trees, and a mess of debris. It was only the familiar sensation of the dirt path beneath his boots that proved to him he was in a well-known locale at all: much of the elegant rows of namesake linden trees that normally shaded the road leading from Cass' farm to Phoenix's and from there on to the rest of the village had been bludgeoned to bits, the trees' fallen, fractured trunks slowing his progress as he picked his way through the remnants of their once-resplendent branches. Fires dotted the area all around him, the ground quaked so viciously at times that he lost his balance, and the crashing, the shattering, the very violence of the onslaught assaulted his ears relentlessly.

He journeyed on for what seemed like hours; with the sky obscured by clouds of kicked-up dust through which only the feeblest gleams of sunlight could pass, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was anymore. He could do naught but wearily soldier on - arms bleeding, eyes flying in every direction, dirt on his tongue, crouching to survive a nearby collison, or being knocked off his feet by Zi's convulsions - and was sustained by an endless, sickening flood of adrenaline alone.

He did not know how long he had been traveling thusly, exhausted nearly to the point of collapse, nearer still to the point of an indistinct sort of apathy towards his own survival, when the thudding impacts of meteorites around him seemed to slow, and then, after another long and unknown interval of time, finally ceased.

All of Schönberg fell silent at once and Phoenix stopped. His ears rang with the cacophony they had endured for the last several hours, days, years, who could know? He realized dully that his chest was heaving, that his mouth was choked with grit, that his arms had finally stopped bleeding, perhaps because their wounds were so stuffed up with dirt that they had effectively already been clotted. The skin over his left torso burned; why? He must have hurt himself somewhere along the way. He didn't have the energy to look down and deal with that particular concern at the moment.

Breathing came with difficulty. The unnatural brown fog of airborne debris was still thick around him, clogging his needful lungs. He rubbed his stinging eyes; this just made them hurt more. Were they watering from all the irritants or was he weeping with sheer terror and exhaustion? He knew not.

He stood there, gasping deep and ragged breaths, dazed with all that he had just somehow survived, unsure of what to do. Though a strange wind had picked up, blowing yet more detritus into the flesh of his legs and arms like tiny needles, the air was weighty and uncomfortably hot. Were his parents alright? Was his house still standing? Could Heinrich have possibly lived through a moon falling? Where should he even begin looking when he could barely see, barely move his deadened limbs, barely breathe?

Was he the last living being on Zi? Was there anything left that hadn't been destroyed?

He could not dwell on such possibilities right now.

Phoenix sat down. He was tired, so very tired, and this space he now found himself in, cozily tucked between the fallen trunks of two linden trees, was the perfect place to curl up and rest until he could decide...decide...something...what did he need to decide? He stupidly licked his lips; they were covered in grime and he reflexively spat this bitter filth onto the ground. His saliva was dark brown, just like everything else he could see in the small bubble of ominous fog within which he was ensconced.

He rested his head against the lifeless bark of one of the trees and tried to close his dirt-crusted eyes, to let the weariness take over for awhile, but ironically it was above all the abnormal silence that would not allow him any rest. The silvery linden leaves should have been whispering their thanks to the zephyrs ruffling through them. Cows in distant fields should have been lowing greetings to one another; countless birds should have been hidden in a shaded canopy overhead, warbling tunes that would dance in the dappled sunlight.

But there was nothing, nothing but a hot, fell wind faintly blowing, bearing with it a miasma of fear and suffering and violent ends.

Phoenix shakily returned to his feet. He needed to find Heinrich and go home, to whatever was left of it, because Mama and Papa had surely already thought to do the same and were out of their minds with worry for their sons, and because remaining in this hellish, sightless limbo was more than his burdened mind could bear.

He shuffled forwards once more, slowly and carefully picking his way through the tree limbs, fence posts, shingles, bricks, stones, and everything else that littered what had once been a peaceful, shaded path. His every nerve, utterly spent, nevertheless tingled with urgency to find his family and get back to the familiar safety of his home. But he remained mindful and deliberate, knowing that injuring himself further would only delay what he most desired.

The wind blew, and his ragged breath, as well as hope for what he would soon find, kept him going, kept him alive, and he made his way through the swirling darkness. How strange and distant his earlier fanciful thoughts from when he had last traveled along this country lane seemed now! Once upon a time, he had strolled through the shade, hoping to win a girl's heart. Had life ever been so normal, ever been anything but this strange fog? Had sunshine and blue skies and green-clad trees ever existed outside of some long-ago and fondly-remembered dream? The ringing in his ears slowly subsided as he numbly contemplated these questions and ventured through the rubble.

Duck under the uprooted tree listing dangerously overhead.

Climb over the rock.

Detour around the crater with the fire burning in its center.

He was on autopilot, so far lost in his own ruminations that the silence melted away entirely.

And that was when the screaming began.

Phoenix jerked his head upright at this sudden injection of sound. Someone else was alive! And not very far ahead.

"No!" That single, shrieked syllable was the most powerful statement of agony he had ever heard. He hastened forward, towards the sound, stumbling and scraping his knees and palms for his troubles.

"No, no, no! Come back! Please, come back!"

A dim form clad in white came into focus through the fog as he approached: a woman with long, royal blue hair. She was kneeling on the ground, holding...something. Phoenix drew closer.

It was another woman being cradled in the sobbing stranger's arms - or what was left of one. Massive amounts of blood stained the already-darkened earth around them. The figure's right arm and leg were shorn clean off.

Gone.

Phoenix nearly wretched at the ghastly sight of exposed sinew and bone. However, it wasn't so much disgust at the gore that affected him as it was sheer horror at how casually and randomly the poor woman's life had been snuffed out. The utterly indiscriminate nature of this death, of the deaths that had surely occurred for miles and miles around, was mind-boggling. He knew hers was not the last corpse he would find in the days and weeks to come. He closed his eyes as tears clustered hot in his eyes again.

The woman who yet lived must have noticed Phoenix approaching just then, for she cried out to him. "You! Please help! My wife, she...she..." She evidently could not finish her sentence, and all that she was able to utter any further was a strangled sob.

Phoenix hurried over and didn't so much kneel down beside her as awkwardly collapse to the bloody ground when his tired legs gave out. "I don't think she's..." he began in a rasping voice, but he found he, too, could not finish a sentence. Nevertheless, he gamely applied two fingertips to the injured woman's neck, below her jawline. He was not surprised to find that there was no pulse to detect. "I'm sorry," was all he could think of to say. In the face of the enormity of the stranger's suffering, of the suffering happening everywhere, those two small words seemed almost impossibly meaningless.

"No," the stranger whispered, her whole body shuddering with grief. She started rocking back and forth as though her dead wife were a baby being lulled to sleep. "Please, no." She rested her forehead against her wife's temple and wept quietly.

Phoenix longed desperately to return home. Before, he had somehow managed to ignore the possibility of what he might find there. Surely, Heinrich had found someplace safe in the forest to hide and was now making his way back to the farmhouse. Surely, Mama and Papa had cleverly avoided the meteorites as he himself had done, and were eagerly awaiting welcoming their two sons back. But faced as he was now with what was left of this stranger's wife, he was no longer so sure. Every part of his body would protest, but he simply had to get back home and see for himself what the meteorites had wrought.

Still...

He creakily lurched to his feet and looked down at the stranger bent over her spouse, tarrying with indecision over what he should do. That was when he noticed the enormous gash on her shin. It was not only the dead woman's blood seeping into the dust. "You're hurt!" he exclaimed.

The blue-haired woman looked down at the copious amounts of blood issuing forth from her own wound. "Oh..." was all she managed to say. She seemed utterly dazed.

Phoenix yanked the tattered remains of his shirt off and clumsily returned to the ground once more. "Let me see," he said, but he didn't wait for her reaction; he simply drew her leg out from where it had been tucked beside her, and examined the cut. It was quite large, running more than half the length of her lower leg, but thankfully not especially deep. There was, of course, quite a lot of dirt clotted in it already, but not enough to stanch the blood. He bunched up his shirt and pressed it down on the cut, applying as much pressure as he could without hurting her. "This should help for now, but we need to get you someplace safe where we can clean it up and have you elevate it."

The woman blinked at him silently, as if only now genuinely registering his presence for the first time. Her face was as filthy as he imagined his was, aside from the tracks of tears that had meandered down her cheeks. Beneath her left eye, he could just make out a facial marking in a cobalt blue as bright as her hair.

"Do you have someplace safe to go?" he prompted gently. "Can I help in some way?"

"My Gustav," she said cryptically, turning her head, seeking it through the fog.

"Is it still functioning?" Phoenix asked, although he was far from certain even such a famously hardy Zoid could have survived the meteorites. And even if it had, its tracks would be insufficient to navigate the waste-strewn path the road had become.

"I - I don't..." Her voice faded.

Phoenix tied his shirt tightly around her shin. "Come on," he said, standing again and holding his hand out to her. "Let's go see."

She seemed reluctant to let go of her wife's body, but eventually she placed her gently on the ground and allowed him to help her up.

She was wobbly on her feet and could barely stand. Phoenix put her arm around his shoulders - thankfully she was only a couple of inches shorter than he himself was - but even walking with her injured leg favored, she was even slower than he had been in his state of abject exhaustion, and groaned in pain after traveling only about fifteen feet. They had gone far enough, though, for her nearby Gustav to have come into view through the endless swirling eddies of dusty fog.

Phoenix did not need perfect atmospheric clarity to see that the poor creature had not fared much better than the stranger's wife had. He stopped and allowed his companion to take in the crumpled shell and painfully dented metal, although, he noticed, the cockpit had miraculously escaped the destruction almost completely unscathed. As with the one tree he had passed earlier, still standing tall and healthy amid great numbers of its downed comrades, the utterly capricious nature of the meteorites' trajectories was on display once again. But sadly, an intact cockpit was not enough: telltale glimmering shards spilled silver over the earth near the Zoid's left tracks, leaving no doubt that the unfortunate snail had already perished. The woman's vivid blue eyes took in the scene without a word, her lips pressed together into a thin line.

"I left it for only a moment when I saw Küste get hit," she finally said after several seconds' silent appraisal.

"A moment was all it took, really." Phoenix looked down at her leg. His shirt was drenched with enough blood that it didn't look like it would be able to absorb much more. "Do you live nearby? Your wound needs better treatment than I can give you out here in this...this..." He was at a loss for words to describe their fog-choked wasteland.

"I'm a transporter," she said. "I was here to make a pickup. I don't really know anyone in this area."

He had figured as much. "Why don't you come with me, then? My home isn't far from here and I can help you with your leg." But she was already shaking her head.

"I can't leave Küste. I just can't." Her arm slipped from around Phoenix's shoulders and she slid back down to the earth. Phoenix couldn't tell if it was from pain and exhaustion, or perhaps from giving up entirely.

He crouched down beside this sad stranger and put his hand on her shoulder. There was substantial muscle beneath her warm skin. Strength.

"I think Küste would want for you to get through," he told the woman softly. In truth, he was saying this as much to her as to himself. For some reason, no meteorite had ever fallen where he had been currently standing. He had made it through the disaster alive for a reason. It was his responsibility now to survive.

She looked at him with tear-filled eyes and then wiped them all away with one filthy hand, leaving a small streak of clean skin beside each eye. "You're right," she said at length. "I think that is what she would want. But I can hardly walk. I'll only slow you down."

Before Phoenix could respond, the terrible noise of screams, far in the distance, came to them on the scorching breeze. They both turned toward the sound. The screaming continued until the staccato of several gunshots punctuated the air, then all fell silent once again.

Phoenix stood and helped the woman up. "We'll make do," he said. "It doesn't seem like it's very safe out here anymore. Come on."

Despite all evidence to the contrary, his endurance had not yet been exhausted. Energized by the new unspoken dangers, he scooped the stranger up in his arms as he set off once more. "I don't think we're far from my home. Hopefully we'll get there before any unfriendly folks do."

The woman nodded, looking dazedly off into the distance at nothing and resting her head against his shoulder as he bore her along. Several minutes passed before she said, "Thank you...um..."

He grunted as he worked to right his balance after awkwardly stepping over a large branch. "Phoenix," he gasped.

"Hafen."

He nodded once in acknowledgment and she leaned her head back against his shoulder.

-.-.-.-

There was a specific tulip tree at the front of Phoenix's yard that he had been looking at through his bedroom window ever since he was a toddler. He would know its branches anywhere, and it was their particular contours, looming spookily out of the darkness many feet overhead, that told him they had made it back at last.

"We're here," he said, setting Hafen down and wiping sweat off of his forehead. His biceps were so far gone he could barely feel them anymore. It had been a long walk, at least as far as the passing of time was concerned.

They ventured carefully forward through the haze - as thick here as it had been on the path to the Lindens' - and Phoenix's eyes darted about, assessing the location and severity of the damage as each new tableaux came into view. He spotted nothing moving aside from a handful of localized fires, and heard no voices, but he pushed the meaning of such frightening omens aside. First things first: if the house was still standing, he had to get Hafen inside and tend to her leg.

He knew that the house was not especially far from the tulip tree, but as with all other travel since the meteorites had begun falling, it seemed to take ages to cover a short distance. But momentarily he was able to discern a large shape through the swirling fog, and knew that, somehow, by some miracle, the Standhafts' simple farmhouse had made it, too.

"Thank the stars and moons and heavens," he breathed. "Come on," he encouraged Hafen, who was wincing with pain as she limped along at his side, his blood-saturated shirt flapping wetly against her leg with each step. "We're nearly there. My parents will be able to help, too." He nudged open the front door and stepped into the kitchen. "Mama! Papa! Is Heinrich here? I'm back!" Turning to Hafen, he added with a small smile, "They'll have you good as new in no time. I can't tell you how many times my brother and I have gotten busted up, slicing ourselves to ribbons on fence wire, falling out of trees..." He trailed off.

The house was oddly silent.

"Mama? Papa?"

There was no response.

Hafen sat down heavily in the chair that Heinrich had occupied the last time Phoenix had been in this room, her face white.

"Mama!" Phoenix called again. "Is anybody here?"

There was nothing to be heard save the wind outside, its moans amplified by the windows that had already been open at lunchtime.

"They must be outside looking for Heinrich," he declared confidently, shutting and locking the windows against the dust they were blowing inside. "Alright then, let's take care of your leg here and then I'll go find them."

Hafen watched him silently as he moved about the kitchen, fetching a couple of dish towels from a drawer and some antibacterial ointment and dressings from a very high cupboard. "Phoenix," she said.

He paid her no mind and went to the sink with one of the towels to wet it. No water came from the tap when he turned the handle, however. "Pipe's probably busted. That'll take some doing to fix, but at least we still have the well in the yard." The pitcher of water from lunchtime was still on the table, so he dipped the towel in that, instead, then sat down on a chair beside the one Hafen had propped her hurt leg on and undid his bloodied shirt from her shin.

Despite his being shirtless this entire time, now was the first opportunity she'd even had to lay eyes on the enormous scrape on his left side, still dappled with a rash of gravel and grit. It covered at least half his torso, with an angry flush of inflammation spreading well beyond that she could see through the covering of grime. "You're hurt."

He looked down briefly. "Oh, this little scratch? I'm fine."

His tongue stuck out a little bit as he worked, Hafen noticed. As he wiped the blood from the wound, dried it, applied ointment, pressed two large gauze pads against it, and wrapped tape around her leg to keep the pads in place, she watched him, her heart heavy. It would not be long until he found out, and as he assisted her, his hands gentle and caring, she knew to the very depths of her soul that he did not deserve what he was about to discover.

"Phoenix," she said again, to no avail.

"Right then, that's looking a lot better. Let's get you to the sitting room so you can relax a little, and then I'll head out to find my parents and brother."

Hafen allowed herself to be helped to her feet, and he patiently led her down the hall to a small, cozy room with a fireplace, a comfortable-looking chair and loveseat set, and a tidy bookshelf stuffed full with volumes. Had it been any other day that day, one would have been able to view the fields of wheat rippling in light breezes through the windows, but now there was only the wall of brown fog and the glow of distant fires to be seen.

"There now, you just rest. I'll be back in a tick."

Hafen watched him go. When the kitchen door slammed shut again, all the events of the day seemed to suddenly close in on her at once, and she crumpled to the side of the chair, sobbing so hard she couldn't breathe.

-.-.-.-

It was difficult to tell, but the day of the cataclysm was, indeed, passing. The sky had been darkened by all of the earth and debris that had been dislodged by each of the countless meteorite impacts, of course, but as night fell, the impenetrable gloom that had lain heavily over the land now shifted, changed character. No moons nor friendly stars could reach their light through it to that troubled planet, and Zi descended into a total darkness.

Hafen's dreamless, restless half-sleep dissipated with the sound of the kitchen door opening and closing, and two deadbolts being thrown home. Phoenix stepped into the sitting room momentarily and she looked up.

Even in the dim illumination of the room's old-fashioned lamp, she could see that everything about him had changed. His face was ashen, his shockingly green eyes seemed almost gray, and his lips were pressed together so tightly it was as though he were trying to keep something inside from escaping. In the lamp's pale glow, he seemed to have aged twenty years in the hour that he'd been gone. A deadly seriousness had fallen over him, with no trace left of what had constituted levity in his aspect earlier.

"Did you -" she started to ask.

"How's your leg?" he inquired, interrupting. "Can I get you anything?"

"I'm - it's..." She swallowed hard. "The bleeding stopped."

"Good." He ran a hand through his dirt-flecked hair absently. "Let me get you a change of clothes. I'd offer you a bath but without plumbing I'll need to get water from the well, and it's too dark to really see outside anymore." Hafen nodded just as another series of staccato gunshots rang out in the distance. "I know getting around room to room will be tough, but I think for safety's sake we should put out the light. I don't want to call attention to the fact that our house is still standing and probably contains food and other necessities."

Hafen nodded again. "The screaming and gunshots we heard earlier were probably someone trying to defend their home from looters."

"Yeah. Our best bet is to lie low and hope no one sees the house if they're passing through the farm. I imagine it's everyone for themselves out there." He looked sharply out the windows as if expecting to catch sight of the hordes that were surely already descending upon them.

"Phoenix, you don't have to do all of this for me. I'm a complete stranger, I'm a nobod -"

But he simply interrupted her again: "Let me go see what I can find for you to change into."

-.-.-.-

The total darkness wrought a strange kind of blindness, where sounds were crystal clear, and halls and rooms through which Phoenix had trod his entire life became deceptively elastic, stretching and shrinking as the furniture and objects they contained shifted position and proportion. Phoenix bumped his wearied limbs a few times before learning his lesson and slowing down as he padded softly towards his parents' bedroom.

It was a simple enough task - retrieve clean pants and a shirt from Mama's dresser - and Phoenix tended to it with a single-minded, almost reverent devotion. But it was not easy, and not just because there was no light to see by and his body teetered on the edge of collapse. In truth, he was being hunted, and it took a keen level of alertness to keep himself hidden. For the moment his thoughts wandered, the instant his attention freed itself from the tethers of the present, the merciless visions found him again.

A hand, palm up, still attached to the rest of a body that was buried in debris and wooden beams that had once been the bones of the barn. The fingers curled slightly upwards as though reaching for some salvation. Phoenix had wordlessly taken them in his own fingers and held on, cherishing the final vestiges of warmth that remained. The callouses across the palm and fingertips spoke of hard work on behalf of others: choices and sacrifices made, dreams deferred or realized, all for the love of family.

Mama's face, too, hovered unbidden in his mind's eye like a stubborn spectre, her skin bearing an unnatural pallor she had never had while alive. Her green eyes, wide open and staring, mouth ajar in what had probably been a scream. But no sound issued forth from those lips that had kissed Phoenix's forehead a thousand times; she was dead, horridly crushed under debris, mere feet from her husband, a small fire burning between them both.

Phoenix selected what felt like a shirt from the drawer and knew that the memory in his mind's eye of his mother's face and his father's hand would accompany him to the grave. They couldn't possibly be gone - gone forever - when here were Mama's clothes, clean and neatly folded, ready to accompany her out on another day of hard work in the fields. Hadn't they all had lunch together only a short time ago?

Heinrich, too.

Phoenix closed his eyes and took a slow breath in. The world looked just as inky black whether his eyes were open or shut. Was it the dust and debris and the nighttime? Or was it only so hopelessly dark because Heinrich was still out there somewhere, alive or dead? Phoenix was afraid to nurture even a shred of hope that his brother had survived the meteorites, but hope endured in his heart nevertheless, a tiny flicker of light shining bravely through the darkness and dread. He didn't know which would be worse: the unknowing he suffered now, buoyed by hope yet sinking with fear, or the certainty of finding Heinrich's small mangled body somewhere out there in that unnatural, infinite gloaming.

These were questions he did not need to answer right now.

Phoenix retrieved what he assumed, from the hefty feel of the material, were his mother's pants she wore when working out in the fields, and tucked both them and the shirt under his arm. Thirty seconds' tentative steps brought him back to the top of the stairs, where his left hand managed to find the decorative wooden globe at the top of the bannister just before he would have gone tumbling down.

Instead, he sat down on the top step, resting his elbows on his knees and staring off into the nothingness. He did not want to go downstairs just yet, clumsily or otherwise. Somehow, the very act of handing Hafen his mother's clothes felt weighted with too much meaning: a meaning far too heavy for him to bear, much less bear alone. It brought a finality to all that had happened in the last who-knew-how-many hours. Time had been irrevocably split by the disaster into a Before and an After, and Phoenix didn't yet feel ready to face the world of After. He wasn't sure he ever would be.

Gunshots rang out again. They sounded a good deal closer than they had earlier.

Phoenix was on his feet again immediately. With a bit more sureness of direction this time, he returned to his parents' bedroom. His eyes were by now so fully adjusted to the darkness that the window on the wall opposite was visible as a dim rectangle just scarcely brighter than the rest of the room. Using this marker to orient himself, he made straight for the tall armoire in the far corner, his hand reaching to touch and then grasp the cold object stored on top: his father's rifle.

Now at the top of the stairs once more, he was about to begin carefully feeling his way down when he heard, "Phoenix?" It was a whisper-yell.

"Coming," he whisper-yelled back.

He got himself and the three items he was carrying to the first floor safely. "I'm here," he said to Hafen in a low voice as he placed the rifle on the floor next to the doorway and entered the sitting room. "Are you alright?"

"They sound so close," Hafen said softly. "Do you think they'll find your house? Do we have any way of defending ourselves if they mean us harm?"

"Yes. Don't worry. We'll be alright." He squeezed his left hand once, feeling the two pieces of clothing he held there. A quiet shudder ran through his body, and then he stilled. "Here. Take these."

Hafen accepted the proffered shirt and pants silently. "Phoenix," she murmured. At last, in this empty house enrobed in whirling shadow, she knew she had his attention. There was nowhere else to run anymore. "Are you alright?"

A long pause.

"No," he whispered finally. The word felt magnified in the stillness.

"You - you found them, didn't you?" He didn't, couldn't answer, and that was how she knew for certain. "Oh, love. Oh, love. Come here."

Ever since the clouds had cleared and the apocalypse about to rain down upon Zi had been revealed in all its terrible glory, Phoenix had not stopped. His focus had simply transferred directly from one critical task to the next - get Cass under the shelter, find the road home without getting killed, travel along the road home without getting killed, carry Hafen along the road home without harming her, clean her wound, find her some clothes, find a means to defend his home from thieves and looters - and it was only right at this moment, in a darkness far heavier than the mere absence of light, in an unnatural near-silence broken only by the sound of hot breezes and gunfire, that Phoenix finally turned and looked the devastating truth of After in the eye, accepting his fate.

And it was only right at this moment, finally, that the tears of all that he had seen and endured and lost were unleashed, and he collapsed weeping into the filthy arms of a person he barely knew, but who was nevertheless, right now, all he had left in the world.

"I'm so sorry, love. I'm so sorry," Hafen crooned into his freckled ear, her own voice wavering and buckling under the weight of sorrow, too. Without conscious thought they moved together to the loveseat, sat down entwined in the other's arms, and cried until their tears ran dry and sheer exhaustion overtook them.

-.-.-.-

Phoenix awoke suddenly in the world of After a short time later. Hafen's dirty face was just beside his own, as she leaned heavily against him, sound asleep. Why had he woken up? Then he heard it again: more gunshots. More screams.

He shifted slowly and gently - every muscle, joint, and tendon in his body shrieking in protest - and settled Hafen onto the back of the couch. The easiest and most obvious means of ingress to the house was the kitchen: its door was the most easily noticed, and its windows were invitingly accessible from outside, thanks to the porch. The kitchen was where he needed to stay.

Phoenix sat down heavily into the nearest chair, Papa's rifle coldly recumbent across his lap. He propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his palms. Even with his eyes closed, even if he covered his ears to block out the moaning wind, there was no escaping After. It would be with him forevermore.

Tears ran down his filthy cheeks and he took no notice of them. Nothing seemed to matter in the After.

He set down his head in his folded arms and, hunched forward, fell asleep again almost immediately, the rifle impossibly heavy over his legs.

-.-.-.-

Phoenix was again awoken by a noise. He lifted his head groggily and looked around. Dawn seemed to have broken, for the windows had lightened slightly, and the darkness no longer felt quite so oppressive. How astonishing: Zi still turned. Even with all of these losses. Even After.

Phoenix sat up slowly, the pain in his stiff, weary joints almost unbearable, and listened intently. Perhaps whatever had awoken him would -

There it was again, outside. Was that...bleating?

Wary of some sort of trick, Phoenix readied Papa's rifle against his shoulder. Slowly and silently, he undid the locks, then swung the door open abruptly, taking dead aim at anyone standing on the other side.

There was no one there.

The dense brown fog still spun in serene whorls through patches of weak morning sunbeams fighting their way through from high above. Then he saw them. Leaning against the porch railing just a few feet away were two fluffy tan blobs shifting nervously about, one larger, one smaller. When the larger one opened its mouth and bleated, Phoenix nearly dropped his rifle in shock. Sheep? Could it be? He stepped closer. It was! Bluebell and her lamb were indeed standing on his front porch, anxious and absolutely covered in filth, but apparently no worse for the wear after what must have been a grueling journey.

There was something curled up at their feet.

Phoenix carefully set the rifle down and went over to them.

Bluebell gave him a small headbutt of greeting, and he patted her head tenderly.

"Heinrich," he whispered, crouching down beside the tiny prone form. Even all the dirt and detritus of the apocalypse could not completely conceal the flaming red hair of the Standhaft family.

"Mm?" Heinrich replied drowsily. He yawned, then sat bolt upright, bright eyes wide. "Phoenix! You're alive!"

Without a word, Phoenix gathered his younger brother into his arms and held on tight, unsure if he would ever be able to let go again.


	2. Dan: Unbroken

**DAN  
**_**Unbroken**_

Everything was gone. In the course of only one afternoon.

Gone.

Dan Flyheight stood on the banks of one of the three rivers that met and combined here. His home, Seasta, was ordinarily a lively, heavily-forested trading town. Perhaps in some other existence it still was, but what faced Dan now from where he stood, on the western edge of the village, was a ruin.

Sturdy wooden buildings that had once been homes or businesses had been toppled.

All three rivers ran black with the dirt and ash swirling through the air.

Everyone was dead.

And the incomprehensibly vast hickory forest - from whence had come food, shelter, and an almost magical type of wood renowned for its ability to bend but not break - was completely engulfed in bright, angry flames, lost forever.

Dan still unthinkingly clenched the grip of his hickory bow in his left hand. He hadn't even had the opportunity to use it. Miraculously, after everything, it, and he, were still in one piece.

He had left the house earlier that afternoon to go hunting. His father, a doctor, had a busy practice, and his mother, a historian, was wheelchair-bound. His sister Dahlia was still only a child, and afflicted with some mental burden that left her often aloof and difficult to understand, besides. Dan had had to grow up quickly as a result of these facts, often taking on responsibilities in number and difficulty that far exceeded what were normal for his age. Hunting was one of these responsibilities.

It did not feel like one, however. Dan prided himself on being able to contribute to the health and nourishment of his family, and his skills with a bow were superlative. He did not enjoy killing any living, feeling creature - and aimed first and always for the fastest kill possible so as not to cause any more suffering than was necessary - but to see his parents' faces light up when he brought home a meal that would last them several days was indescribably gratifying. Others might have chafed at the obligations of being something of a third adult in the family, but Dan had never viewed it that way.

Besides, he had always enjoyed the "company," such as it was, of the forest. Its ancient trees, many living for hundreds of years and countless generations, had quietly carried on over the years through fire, disease, dust storms, overlogging, and even a flood long before Dan had been born, when the unusually snowy winter in the nearby mountains had been followed by an unusually warm spring in the valley, and the banks of Seasta's three rivers had simply been overrun.

No, to step into the forest's verdant embrace, to steal soundlessly through the dirt and leaves on its floor in soft-soled boots, to experience deep shade and a delicious silence: these things were not drudgery, but a gift.

Dan had not known what was happening far beyond Zi's atmosphere as he had set out from his house for the forest that afternoon, bow in hand and a quiver of arrows slung over his back. It had been a cloudy day, and it wasn't until those clouds had scuttled aside just as he reached the forest's edge, like curtains opening on a devastating final act, that anything at all of what they were all about to face had become clear.

The very first thing he had done was run back to the village, yelling at the top of his lungs. It was amazing how few people, in the course of their ordinary, everyday existences, ever bothered to look up. Perhaps some lives could have been spared had anyone seen the apocalypse about to envelop the planet before Dan had.

But then, perhaps not, because the people who heard Dan yelling and pointing at the sky had looked up, seen the danger themselves, and begun gathering everyone to head for the forest, where Seasta's mighty hickories, who had lived through everything and still stood tall, would protect them.

Hickory wood had always bent, but not broken.

Until today.

The burning meteorites, most no larger than a pea, had fallen down on Seasta's beautiful, ancient hickories in an unforgiving hellrain, punching through the trees' hardy trunks as though they were made of jelly. All it took was one tree going up in flames, although it was probably many more besides, before the entire forest was ablaze.

Everyone had gone into the forest for protection.

No one who had entered the forest had survived.

And the only reason Dan was still alive, standing here beside the river instead of being another charred corpse among the burning hickories, was that a neighbor had told him Dahlia wasn't at home, had last been seen playing by the stone bridge, and he had gone to find her so she could be ushered to safety in the forest.

And next to the stone bridge, beside the banks of the river, playing with the smooth river stones she loved so much, was where he had found her, just as his neighbor had said. She had looked up upon hearing his approach, and begun flapping her hands excitedly, as she so often did. There was always so much she seemed to want to tell him on any given day, and though she was mostly non-verbal, he sometimes was able to understand her, anyway, by asking simple questions or pointing to things and seeing how she reacted. Today she might have wished to tell him, perhaps, about a beautiful new rock she had found, or how she had stacked ten of them up high, one atop the next, without a single one falling.

He had been almost to her, reaching his hand out to grab hers the more quickly, when one tiny little piece of hellfire had hit her, shooting through her chest like a bullet, cutting her down right where she stood. He only just managed to avoid grievous injury himself by throwing himself to the ground before any of the dirt and rocks the meteorite had sent flying could hit him.

Dan wondered idly now what it was that she had been so excited to tell him.

He heard a series of cracks and then a great thundering crash emanating from the forest, followed by the roar of a yet stronger inferno. Another old soul gone. The flames engulfing the pride of Seasta, not content to have their fill from the numberless hickories, licked out of the trees, seeking dry grasses, timber-lined wagon roads, a path to enter and feed greedily upon the town itself. To the north, one cottage was already burning. It was only a matter of time before the rest of Seasta was, too.

There was nothing left now.

The next village was three long days' walk west. Dan touched his left cheek, brushing away the tear sliding over the red marking there that many in Seasta had worn. He was the only one left alive who still bore it.

What did this mean, when even the mightiest he had ever known had fallen?

Who was he, to still be alive, breathing in the ashes of the dead instead of burning among them?

The hickories had bent, and bent, and bent, and it wasn't until the apocalypse that they had finally broken.

Beside him, the river's gentle current murmured to itself as it worked its way around brand new obstacles that had not been there mere hours ago - branches, rocks, splintered timber - as it pressed onward, still and forever enduring. Dan turned and began to walk, to the west, towards the molten sun, still just visible through a haze of ash as it seeped below the horizon.


	3. Willow: Release

**WILLOW  
**_**Release**_

She shuffled dazedly into the waiting room like a creature astray, unsure where she belonged, if anywhere. No soothing paint hues of cool blue or pale mint or a whisper of indigo greeted her in this most distressing of places. There was simply white: featureless, institutional white as far as the eye could see. White walls. White chairs. White tables. White light thrown from the strip lights high overhead, casting a harsh, almost blinding glare on the colorless landscape and wilting humans below. This was not her first time journeying to this room to sit and worry, of course, yet she couldn't remember feeling quite so exhausted upon setting foot in here before. The lights were sucking the very life energy out of her. They were so, so very bright, making her feel as though she were lost in a white desert.

Squinting in the glare, her gaze roamed dejectedly over the seating arrangements available. There were plenty of chairs to choose from with so much of the outbreak having already taken its toll; there weren't many left to be anxiously awaiting news of ill loved ones. Each hard plastic seating selection looked as unwelcoming as the next. Had the designers possessed no hearts? Weren't things difficult enough for anyone having to pass the time here without their spines being pained, as well?

None of the handful of people nearest her even met her eye; they were all staring at the floor, mute with exhaustion and worry. She looked around the room again, casting her glance further afield, her breath coming shallow, paralyzed with indecision. Not that it mattered where she sat, really, except that, beginning only a few hours ago, suddenly everything seemed to matter.

"I'm drowning," she heard again, for the millionth time. She shook her head to dispel the memory, and that was when she heard something else, not in her head this time.

_Bick_. _Back_.

_Thwock_.

_Bick_. _Back_.

_Thwock_.

Reflexively, she turned towards the source of the sound. In a small alcove set off of the main room were more white walls, more white chairs, and someone she knew.

"Hey, Willow," Cole said nonchalantly as she approached, as though they often ran into each other in the infirmary's waiting area. In fact, she had not seen him since their Origins class had concluded some months ago, when young people's courses of study had begun diverging. The _Globally 11_ was a very big ship.

"Cole," she said stupidly, staring at him.

Her former classmate was slouched casually in one of the impossibly uncomfortable-looking white seats, tossing a blue rubber handball against the wall.

_Bick_. It bounced off of the wall.

_Back_. It bounced up from the floor.

_Thwock_. It landed soundly in his hand and was tossed again.

"So, who's dying?" he asked, taking his eyes off of the ball just long enough to give her a wry grin.

"What?" Everything in Willow's mind felt dull and murky. The sound of the ball's impacts against wall, floor, hand, wall, floor, hand, was soothing in a strange way; at least it erased the memory of those gasping, rattling breaths from her head.

Cole caught the ball again and held onto it now, turning to her. "Who are you here for?"

"Oh." Of course. "Hen."

"Ah, I'm sorry Willow. That's rough."

"She's all I have left," she whispered, almost to herself.

Cole resumed tossing the ball. "My brother's in there," he said, with a head toss in the direction of the squeaky swinging double doors Willow had seen her unconscious mother disappear through a short time ago. "He's all I've got left, too."

"Really?" Willow was having a hard time believing this. Cole seemed as if he were here for a haircut, perhaps, not waiting to hear if his sick brother would live.

"It is what it is." _Bick_. "Crying isn't going to kill that virus." _Back_. "No one in my family assumed any of us would survive the epidemic." _Thwock_. "So we've already said our goodbyes."

She blinked rapidly. Was that the answer to enduring sorrow, then, an answer she was now discovering far too late? Willow had already bid goodbye to one sister and one brother prior to the outbreak - Lotus had passed very young from illness and Heath from an accident in the factory - but the outbreak had taken away everyone else so far: Sage. Ash. Maple. Fern. Lily. Linden. Hazel. Everyone except Hen.

Willow herself had fallen ill as well, but her case of the upper respiratory virus sweeping through the cloistered population of the _Globally_ had been unusually mild, and with her mother's devoted care, she had made it through. A lingering cough that was more irritating than harmful was all that now remained. But it was likely that Hen had caught the virus from her daughter, and though it had seemed self-evident to Willow that Hen's case would be just as survivable as her own had been, this had proved to be a false assumption. Hen had gone from sick to gravely endangered so abruptly that there had been no preparations. No goodbyes.

"I'm drowning."

Willow shook her head again and sat down beside Cole, all concerns about which chair would be "best" now forgotten. She watched him silently as he tossed the ball, over and over and over. There was nothing else to do. For her, Cole, and many others, the infirmary now was a white void into which one descended to await something, anything. Was the empty lingering better, the grasping for any last vestiges of hope? Or was it preferable to accept the bad news that seemed more and more inevitable, and be able to grieve and then move on?

_Bick._

_Back._

_Thwock._

Minutes, hours, days passed - who could count? - and Willow withered in the suffocating, blinding white.

Then, suddenly: the squeaking of the doors.

The stilled population of the waiting room started at the abrupt new sound. One of the young nurses, much of his face covered by a sanitary mask, emerged and cast his glance about the waiting room as every face turned away, no one wishing to make eye contact, no one wanting to be the one for which this nurse was looking. He wasn't rushing, nor were there any creases at the corners of his dark eyes betraying a hidden smile: a smile born of relief to be able to bestow some joyful news upon one of the haggard waiting room residents. That could only mean one thing. The young man looked around the room, and all present seemed to be holding their breath. Willow, glancing briefly at him, swallowed and suppressed an urge to melt into the floor.

The ball landed in Cole's left hand and was not tossed again. He and Willow exchanged furtive, sideways glances with one another. "Maybe me," he mouthed to her.

"Maybe me," she mouthed back, stealing another look over her shoulder at the nurse.

He was facing the other corner of the room, but then, perhaps because her small movement had drawn his notice, he suddenly locked eyes with Willow, and once he had done so, he did not look throughout the room any further.

Cole, the ball in his hand, the chairs, and the white all around her melted away as Willow, struck dumb into paralysis, observed the nurse walking resolutely towards her. It was as though she and he were the only two entities in the entire galaxy. All else was lost.

An eternity later, the nurse stood before her. "Willow," he said softly. "I'm very sorry. We did everything we could."

There was a long, silent pause as Willow struggled to comprehend the meaning of these simple statements.

The nurse held out a rubber-gloved hand. There was a small blue pill in his palm, shiny like a gem. "Only if you'd like. It will help you endure the shock by allowing you to rest comfortably for the next few nights."

"I'm drowning," Hen's voice came then, so loud that it smothered the sight of the glittering blue pill, the sensation of Cole's sympathetic hand alighting upon her shoulder, the blinding white in every direction, the crush of her lungs suddenly ceasing to function.

"No, thank you," she heard herself saying from many, many miles away. "When shall I meet you at the doors?"

The nurse was eyeing her with grave concern, but replied, "Two hours." He held his hand out to her again. "Are you sure? It's helped a lot of the colony these past few months."

"Willow, hang on a second," Cole said as she stood rigidly, miraculously maintaining her balance as everything around her crumbled to pieces.

She did not answer either of them but instead began walking purposefully towards the door to leave the infirmary. Some of the hunched people still waiting finally looked up to observe her departure, their faces drawn and eyes saddened at the news of the loss of yet another shipmate.

Her vision seemed to be revealing to her only a long, white tunnel as she made her way to the exit door. She did not see the sympathetic faces, and did not seem to see anything really at all until she emerged into one of the _Globally_'s many warren-like hallways. The door closed silently behind her and she stood for a moment, noticing how much of an improvement the air in this hall was compared to the waiting room. No clinical stench of antiseptics, nor miasma of the dying, reached her here.

She didn't know how long she stood there, just breathing, in, out, in, out, appreciating this simple yet nourishing and life-giving act. So many now on the ship could not, but while she yet lived, she could not bear to take it for granted ever again.

"I'm drowning." These had been her mother's last words, spoken only through an exhale before she began coughing so violently she had vomited blood, then lost consciousness. What did that feel like, to drown when you were nowhere near water? For your lungs to be so filled with fluid you were unable to breathe? Willow could not bear to think of how much Hen must have suffered.

She could not bear to think much about anything, right now.

"Coming through!" someone barked from further down the hall, and Willow only just barely sidestepped a stretcher being pushed with remarkable speed past her towards the infirmary, a wailing little girl running as fast as she could after it in its wake.

Willow watched the door after it swung shut behind them for some moments, her heart pounding. Within the space of a millisecond, a sob was born deep inside her chest, and pushed upwards immediately, yearning to burst out of her.

"No," she whispered, and, fiercely holding her breath, she dashed off down the hall as though Death itself were pursuing her.

-.-.-.-

"I thought I might find you here."

Willow looked up. She hadn't even realized someone was approaching, she'd been so lost in a dull haze of grief. Cole was standing several steps down on the staircase a few feet to her left, his face shadowed by the dim lighting. Above, the stars whizzing past, visible through the heavily-fortified skylight, were pale.

She was seated near the sturdy entrance door to the _Globally_'s huge feed storage room, a room that had been sealed off as a result of disuse a very long time ago. She'd heard that the animals of the ship had once been stabled nearby, but had never seen those facilities, nor the storage room itself. All of the animals had died out long before she'd been born. The hallways, stairs, and walkways leading to this particular door were, for all intents and purposes, a dead end, and therefore not frequently traveled, and so it had become a place she came sometimes when she wanted to be alone.

Today, she dangled her legs over the side of the walkway, rested her arms and chin on one of the railing's horizontal crossbars, and absently watched over the goings-on two floors below, where the entrance to the botanic garden was located. There was not much to enjoy or appreciate in the botanic garden these days, as quite a number of plant species had simply died off, stubbornly resisting the cultivation efforts of even the most skilled Scientists, Botanists, and Farmers of the ship. But still the colonists came, to appreciate what flora remained, and to experience, it was said, air that was cleaner and fresher than anywhere else on board.

Willow fancied she could smell some of that sweet air even from all the way up here.

"Can I join you?" Cole asked, coming up the last few steps to stand beside her.

"Sure," Willow croaked, her voice thick from having been choking down sobs for the last hour.

Cole sat down on the industrial metal flooring beside her with a sigh, letting his legs dangle over the side of the walkway, too. He swung them back and forth idly for a few moments. At length, he said, "Your mom was really nice, Willow. She was a good teacher and a good person, too."

Willow nodded, the tears clustering hot in her eyes again, and said nothing. She didn't trust her voice to speak.

"I come up here too, sometimes," Cole said. He was gazing across the empty space between their walkway and a vast wall about forty feet away, painted a reddish-orange and latticed with various pipes and cables. "I guess my secret hiding spot wasn't as secret as I thought. It's a really, really big ship, and there aren't all that many of us left nowadays, but do you ever get the feeling that you just need to get away from...everything?"

"Because you feel like you can't breathe," she whispered.

Hen's voice came to her again, but now warbly, more distant than before: "I'm drowning."

"Exactly. I just feel like, the sooner we get to Incognitus, the better. Supposed to be in the next few years, right? This is no way for people to live. Even with everything the planners thought of, all the ways they tried to keep us comfortable and happy, this is no way for people to live."

Willow, as she so often did, pondered Earth just then. On Earth, where humans had the ability to move about freely, swim in oceans, breathe clean air that all the plants and trees had created, would everything have been different? Would the respiratory virus kill as many people there as it had here? Or would there have been good and effective medicine, available in far greater quantities than the _Globally_'s aged fabrication systems could churn out, that would have saved lives? The mere idea of some alternate existence, where her siblings and Hen were still alive, made Willow intake her breath sharply. It was simply too tantalizing a possibility, but her reveries were swiftly interrupted by the eruption of a coughing fit.

"You okay?" Cole asked, when she had finally stopped. "I still have that cough, too."

"I wish it would go away," she said fiercely, almost to herself. "Why did the virus kill almost my entire family, but not me? Why couldn't they have had the weak version that I got? Then they'd all be...be here coughing...with..." She swallowed hard and swiped the back of her hand impatiently across her eyes to stop the fresh surge of tears that threatened to spill out. "Why am I even here?" she continued, spitting out her words like bullets. "What's the point of living? I wish it had taken me, too; then I wouldn't have to be in this big, stupid, flying..._cage_ without them, all alone!" It was a terrible thing to say, but the worst part was, it was true. Her very continued existence felt irrelevant. She panted from this uncharacteristic outburst, coughed once, and stared at the wall opposite, struggling to quell the anger and shame brimming over in her chest.

"So don't waste it," Cole said.

Willow blinked for a moment, then turned to him. "What? Waste what?"

"What the universe gave you," he replied with a sweep of his arm, encompassing nothing yet seeming to indicate everything. Willow kept blinking uncomprehendingly at him, and so he added with a half-smile, "The reason you're alive."

Was he poking fun? "And what reason would that be?" she queried icily.

Cole laughed, taking no offense at her tone. "I don't know, Willow, but that's just it! We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what your future holds. Don't you see? Whatever the reason was that the virus spared you - if there even was a reason at all - you've been given something that, unfortunately, your family was not. It's up to you to do something with that gift. To make it count."

Willow rested her chin on her arms again as she considered her former classmate's words. A light, fresh whorl of air from the gardens far below reached her again, and she breathed it in deeply. As she did, she thought once more of what her loved ones would never again experience, and how absurdly infinitesimal the odds had been that she was still here to be doing so.

Luck. A gift, from the universe.

Cole was right.

"Why do you think _you've_ been spared?" she asked.

"Spared thus far, anyway." He grinned at her. "But let's be real: we wouldn't make it the last few bazillion miles to Incognitus without killing each other unless I were here to make sure we laughed instead of cried." He straightened, intoning theatrically, "It is my most sacred calling, you see."

Willow allowed herself a tiny smile in response.

"Anyway, I'll let you be for now. You should probably go down to the doors soon. It's almost time."

"Yeah," she said faintly, staring off at nothing.

Cole bonked his right shoulder into her left. "I know it feels like you're really alone right now, but you're not. We're all going through this, and we're all here for each other. Don't forget that." He stood. "We'll all be brave together, okay?"

"Okay," she echoed.

"See you around, Willow. Take care of yourself." Cole trotted down the stairs lightly, as though his only living family member weren't maybe dying, as though he hadn't a care in the world. Willow watched him go, then put her chin back down on her arms with a heavy sigh. Sweet drafts of air caressed her from below, flowing around and past her like a river seeking the sea.

-.-.-.-

"Today we gather to send off Henrietta. A phenomenal teacher, who spent years passing down to our young people our most treasured heritage as Earthlings: our past, and our planet's past, as we who have never set foot upon it are able to understand it. A wonderful daughter, sister, and mother, who was loved, and passed that love on to all who knew her. We thank her for her life, and for all that she has given us."

On the councilwoman droned, reciting rapturous platitudes that could apply to nearly anyone, and probably had been scarcely personalized at all, so sudden had been Hen's passing. Willow wasn't really listening; she stood erect, hands clasped in front of her, unblinking eyes riveted to her mother's colorless face.

When the councilwoman had finally concluded her eulogy, she nodded to Willow, who stepped forward to the stretcher upon which Hen lay. There were only a few moments left for them to be together; soon, the stretcher would be rolled past the first of the three great metal bilge doors into the inner chamber, then past the second door to the outer chamber. There, the stretcher would be secured to the floor and the two doors sealed. Moments later, the outer chamber would be depressurized and the final bilge door opened, allowing Hen's body to float from the stretcher and be borne gently off into infinity.

Willow placed both her hands on her mother's cheeks. The skin there was cool but not cold. "I'm sorry," was all she could think of to say. Sorry for not being a better daughter, sorry for not treasuring every second they had had together, sorry for somehow transmitting the virus and killing her. The latter hadn't been her choice, but it was her fault, anyway. Hen's face was calm and serene in death; no trace remained of the horrifying contortions Willow had seen as her mother struggled for breath. She feared that that was an image that would haunt her forever instead of the countless memories she had from before the illness, when Hen had been alive and well. Willow studied Hen's face single-mindedly now, fighting to memorize every feature, every contour, because peacefully passed was a better memory to keep in her mind's eye than drowning alive.

A hand alighted on Willow's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. From far away: "It's time now, my dear."

A sob again threatened to burst from Willow, and again she quelled it, swallowing it hard, pushing the pain away. "Goodbye, Hen," she managed to whisper, nearly choking on all this unexpressed sorrow.

She turned and walked away from the doors, the other mourners, the stretcher, her mother, and began walking up the metal stairs out of the bilge, tears pouring silently down her cheeks. Behind her, she heard the first of the two doors drawing open and Hen's stretcher being rolled forward.

Willow walked, and some blank period of time passed, filled with shadows and distant voices that were maybe talking to her, maybe weren't, but it didn't matter because Willow couldn't understand a single word, anyway. Through this murky world, her feet pursued their own ends with no conscious input from her mind.

She was not, therefore, surprised when she found herself once again on the quiet catwalk outside the sealed feed storage room. Somewhere far in the _Globally_'s wake now, Hen's drowned body was floating peacefully in that boundless dark. How could Willow possibly go on, when she had lost everyone?

A gift, Cole had said. She'd been given a gift.

She looked down to the botanic garden entrance, two floors below. What plants remained in the garden selflessly gave and gave their fresh, pure, life-sustaining air, and all the colonists had to do was breathe it in. She hadn't realized, in fact, until this very moment, that she'd been holding her breath. She closed her eyes and took one long, slow inhale, feeling the air's cool presence pass through her nostrils, her throat, to her needful lungs.

To breathe, to really breathe, was to live, and suddenly, all she wanted was to live, live and see what this strange, heartbreaking gift from the universe would bring her.

Willow opened her eyes and gazed upward, to the numberless stars, and exhaled.

-.-.-.-

* * *

**Author's Note: **I post this final chapter mid-March 2020, in the midst of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic. In my final round of edits before uploading, a good deal of Willow's tale struck frighteningly close to home for me. It is my hope that soon, stories of infections and deaths from uncontrollable viruses return to the realm of fiction.

Thank you for the gift of your time and attention, dear reader, and may you and your loved ones remain healthy and safe.


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